Many retailers and distributors of goods are increasingly blending electronic (e.g., website and mobile app) purchasing activity with retail (e.g., in-person) purchasing activity. E-tail and Retail are blending more and more. For example, retail locations may maintain an inventory that a website may be capable of making available for purchase. Customers often do not care about the source of the delivery, whether this is from a store or from a distribution center—just that the correct product arrives in a timely fashion.
As the prevalence of electronic commerce options have increased, some retailers have begun to offer sourcing from brick-and-mortar stores, often termed as “ship-from-store”. Existing techniques to manage sourcing from ship-from-store often involve ad-hoc processes and rules and significant levels of human oversight and management. This leads to significant cost and complexity when attempting to manage a high volume of orders among many physical locations.
Likewise, from a consumer perspective, as the prevalence of electronic commerce options have increased, customers have increasingly demand detailed delivery options (based on speed and cost considerations) and more precise delivery dates and delivery date guarantees. Existing retailer processes for sourcing orders to meet a delivery date have become extremely complex for a retailer, and involves many considerations. Accordingly, existing mechanisms for providing information about ship-from-store orders have been limited. The existing processes may lead to unexpected inventory shortages and unreliable product fulfillment.